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Friday, 15 August 2008

Portishead Third

The best album this year. Without abandoning it's sample-based, British New Wave cinematic melodrama the group have come up with something new and different but extreme and dramatic. Best of all it's an old-school album, not just a collection of singles, with a cumulative aesthetic and an abstract narrative contour. It's so good, tracks get used on shows as diverse as Hollyoaks and ITV4's Tour de France coverage. It's too radical to be shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. No I didn't buy it yesterday. I bought it the day it was released in April and have listened to it, rapt, every other day since. It's brilliant.